‘Matchmaking’ site for lonely algorithms can make sense of raw data

A start-up is attempting to help companies make much better use of unused consumer data by ‘matchmaking’ the best analysis algorithm with them for a fee.

Known as Algorithmia, the company could potentially make a lot of marketing teams very happy as it will give them access to the thousands of algorithms developed by researchers and published in research papers and for scientific review that almost never see the light of day, according to MIT’s news site, Technology Review.

As things stand, many companies have collated large amounts of data about their customers or clients but have little idea of what to do with so much raw data and how to turn it into potential profit.

If the service is to become fully functioning, companies could simply run their data through a search function that will ‘match’ it with the best algorithm which could then make an understandable pattern to otherwise unintelligible data.

So far, the biggest challenge to the idea could be from academics themselves who might feel uncomfortable with the idea of their research being used for commercial gain but, according to their business model, both the company and researcher who designed the algorithm will receive a cut of any payment by a company.

Over time, its founders Diego Oppenheimer and Kenny Daniels expect more than 10pc of the algorithms posted to the site, which need to be formatted to make it easier for companies to use, will be from researchers directly contributing to the database.